Michael Vick doesn’t appear to care much for cats either, or so it seemed in his first start since he wore an Atlanta Falcons uniform in the final game of the 2006 NFL season.

Vick threw for an impressive 284 yards and two touchdowns against the Lions and contributed almost 40 yards rushing with some slick scrambling and ground maneuvers that might have been more impressive than his passing game.

Vick has been out of an NFL starting position since serving an 18-month jail sentence for his role in a dog fighting operation and spending the past season as a backup with little playing time.

As if that circumstance didn’t add enough pressure to his first Philadelphia Eagles start in 2010, he was also contending with the fact that starting quarterback and franchise hopeful Kevin Kolb was out for the game after suffering a concussion in Week 1 against the Green Bay Packers.

Alleviating some of the pressure of Vick’s first start since his prison sentence, fall from the public’s graces, and the apparent quarterback controversy in Philadelphia was the fact that he was playing against the Detroit Lions, whose starting poster-boy quarterback Matt Stafford also fell victim to injury Week 1 when he was blasted by Julius Peppers in a loss to the Chicago Bears.

Despite the opposition, the game fittingly ended up a proverbial dogfight—though the Philadelphia Eagles took the lead by way of Vick’s second touchdown pass in the final minutes of the first half and ran away with it late into the game, the Lions were able to fight back in the fourth.

Rookie halfback Jahvid Best dropped football jaws across the country with a three-touchdown performance, racking up 78 rushing yards and an additional 154 on nine receptions. Best is the first Detroit Lion to post five TDs by Week 2 since Billy Sims did it 30 years ago in 1980—Sims also did it as a rookie, incidentally.

Between the efforts of Best and second-string QB Shaun Hill hitting Calvin Johnson with a 19-yard touchdown pass and a two-point conversion with 1:55 left in the game, the Lions found themselves within a field goal of Philadelphia. When they were able to recover an onside kick after that play, things got really interesting.

But the Lions' efforts weren’t enough to overshadow Vick’s return and use of nine players to rack up his offensive stats. The Eagles defense prevented Detroit from getting its final score and came out of Week 2 with a 35-32 win.

"We can't wait until the end of the game," said Lions center Dominic Raiola in a post-game interview. Though he was alluding to the fact that the Lions had game-winning opportunities in the final seconds of both of their first NFL 2010 season games, his quote, interpreted another way, might just be the perfect Lions slogan should the rest of the season go the way of the past five decades.

Either way, though Vick has been publicly humble in his self-described role as “Philadelphia’s backup quarterback,” he definitely proved in Week 2 that he has potential to be a starter in the NFL once again...possibly even this season depending on how young Kolb develops in the next few weeks.